Thanks to the ground laid by Id with their Doom & Quake games and the phenomenal long term success of Valve's Half Life via Counter Strike and other mods it seems the rest of the industry is finally waking up and taking notice.

EA, being the corporate monolith of gaming, stuck to its 'f--k the modding community' guns for the longest time and were absolute bastards for their withholding of the SDK for the Medal of Honor games. Countless fans were screaming for user made MP maps, let alone mods, and EA did nothing. As if Valve's jaw dropping success with Half Life and Counter Strike wasn't enough to motivate EA to follow suit! Fortunately someone in EA eventually got a clue and Battlefield 1942's moddability produced one of the best mods of all time, Desert Combat. I wonder how many people bought BF1942 just to play that mod?

The good news is modding has become so widespread that publishers who discourage modding risk becoming the odd man. Furthermore they risk watching their investment jeopardizing the long terms sales of any given game by This situation is worsened if a competitor publisher releases a similar game that IS moddable. Modding also gives the opportunity for the community to fix bugs, balance issues and implement new features that the publisher would ordinarily have to devote time and money into implementing in a patch. Despite the risks and headaches associated with releasing a mod friendly game it really is a win/win situation for developers and publishers.